


Le Roi Du Soliel

by sanguine_throne



Category: Kingdom of Heaven (2005)
Genre: cirque du soliel, jut that circus part, or i suppose craque, sorry for existing, sorta AU but not, um crack?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-10
Updated: 2013-12-10
Packaged: 2018-01-04 06:46:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,671
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1077841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sanguine_throne/pseuds/sanguine_throne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Baldwin loves the cirque. Heights? Maybe not so much.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Le Roi Du Soliel

He rose from the river at dawn, a sheen of soft water glistening over his exposed skin. He donned his grand masque of bronze and smiled underneath; today was the day.  
Today was the circus.

The good King Baldwin IV had risen early to bathe and wash his hair. The honey locks cascaded down his face, just as rivulets of Jordan water raced down his lanky figure and dripped proudly onto the soil. The turf under his toes was pleasantly damp and cool, given its proximity to the water, but it didn’t take long for his feet to ache from the dry grittiness of more arid sand.  
This mild discomfort did not faze him, however. After all, how could anyone feel dour when the Cirque du Soleil was in town.

|~*~|~*~|~*~|

“Baldwin, you’re gonna make us late!” Sibylla’s shrill voiced pierced the dressing chambers, though the tapestries that draped the walls of the quarter did manage to sedate the sharper tones of her call.

“I’m hurrying as fast as I can!” Baldwin grunted in frustration as he struggled with his codpiece. The damn thing kept falling off, blast the broken buckle.

“Baldwin!” The young king sighed, ripped the offending article off his slim hips, and dashed out to meet his sister, taking care not to let a cheeky breeze lift his robes too far. He righted his masque on his face and strode out into the Jerusalem heat, sister trailing behind him.

Of course, he was a king, so the trek from palace to sedan chair was but a short moment. He couldn’t work up a sweat just getting to the cirque venue.

Once the sedan chair came to a jolted halt, Baldwin and Sibylla were assisted to the ground. The dome of the circus tent rose arrogantly into the blue sky, a stark contrast to the glaring reds of the tent’s fabric. Baldwin could not suppress a grin as curtains were pulled back to welcome his arrival. Initially, he stumbled as he entered the tent, but thankfully only his sister noticed, and offered him a consolatory wink. She was subtle that way, and Baldwin was grateful for her ability to read him so clearly.

Baldwin and Sibylla were escorted to their bejeweled seats just as a hole in the roof of the tent was closed up, shrouding the stage and seats in darkness. Smaller portholes opened up and provided focused beams of light onto the center of the stage. A dark man with an impressive beard strutted into the middle beam and bowed deeply, “Ladies, gentlemen, nobles and estates, I bid you welcome to the world famous, the ever fabulous, Cirque du Soleil!” Thunderous applause rained down upon his smiling face. “Gracing our wondrous hall are the Roi du Jerusalem, King Baudouin VI,” more applause, “And his ever beautiful sister, Princess Sibylla!” At this, the crowd roared with adoration. Who could resist the charms of the princess of Jerusalem?

As the audience began to settle, the bearded man motioned to a beaded veil to his right. As if summoned by the gesture, half a dozen performers on ornately carved stilts paraded onto the stage. The initial stunt was flashy, but otherwise uncomplicated. Baldwin could not, however, stifle his glee when one entertainer lept up from his stilts, a feat that should be impossible, and landed gracefully onto the shoulders of another man. The other performers lauded the maneuver, and proceeded to leap from their stilts onto their partners. Once situated, the ensemble began to duck and weave about the stage, incense-laden smoke billowing from an unknown source backstage. The spectacle was very much like a snake-charming routine, and Baldwin certainly felt charmed.

As suddenly as they appeared, the stilt-men bowed and exited the stage. A thunderous bolt of applause cracked through the tent, but was easily outdone by Sibylla’s shriek of delight. Even this was drowned out by the trumpet of the next act.

Elephants. Camels. Lions and Leopards. A veritable menagerie of beasts of all sorts, from feathered to furred, erupted from the beaded curtains of the stage. Tamers danced about the animals, sometimes hopping atop the back of a camel, or catching a parrot from the air. At each interaction, the audience hooted and cheered with as much bestial vigour as the animals before them. The performance became wilder, and the audience followed suit.

Once again, the stage was empty in a flash. Baldwin smiled brightly, though his face was covered by his masque. Sibylla, of course, knew what lay under the gleaming visage. She winked cordially at her brother, just in time for the ringleader to step back into the center light.

“Ladies and gentlemen, tonight we have a special treat…” A drumroll on poorly tuned bongos rose up from the dark behind the curtains, “I give you a special performance, a feat of daring and determination, of courage and craziness…” More drumroll followed, matching the anticipatory quiver that rippled through the crowd, and through Baldwin himself, “The terrible tightrope!”  
Raucous applause smashed through the stadium, accented by cymbal crashes backstage, and the whooping hollers of the young men in the audience.

Their excitement was justified; as the floor of the tent darkened and light focused slightly higher in the air, a single, petite woman in a form fitting white leotard bowed from her platform. She was adorned with beads and baubles that glimmered in the light that seemed to reach out to her, like caressing hands of gold. She was beautiful, with dark hair and olive skin. The alabaster fabric that wrapped around her made her look like and angel, high in the sky. The roar of the audience stilled as she took a first tentative step onto the tightrope. It hardly bowed under her diminutive weight, but the crowd held their breaths nonetheless. Baldwin expected another step to follow, but instead was shocked as she twirled, spun and pirouetted along the thin line of the tightrope. Suddenly she was scurrying on the tips of her toes, then flat-footed again, and then leaning precariously to the left, though her face was serene. Baldwin could hear the reverberations of the tightrope under her; the audience was rapt into complete silence. Baldwin could feel himself being pulled to her, as if by his own thread of tightrope. His breath was hushed and excited, but he felt relaxed by her. He supposed this was a trance, brought on by the siren that had completed her journey to the other side of the tightrope, and bowed deeply and elegantly on the platform that seemed entirely unnecessary, given her apparent ability to walk on air.

Only then did Baldwin realise he really was being pulled. Not by a rope or thread, but by his sister’s hand. He was a tad bewildered, and the ringleader’s voice barely registered in his ears as he announced, “What a sight, what a spectacle, what a show! But ladies and gentlemen, we’re not done yet! Oh no, we have another special performance for you all tonight!”

Baldwin was now ascending. How was he doing that? He looked upwards to see the rungs of a ladder meeting his hands and feet, and the swaying hips of Sibylla above him. Ladder. Up. Sibylla. What? No.

It was too late; the young king was now standing sheepishly on the very platform that the angel had graced. The ringleader was far below him, beard obscured by the top of his head. Baldwin looked to hid left, and there stood his sister, who again winked at him. He realised. She had planned this; the circus, the entrance, the performance.

The king didn’t even have time to glare at her through the openings of his masque, as the angel took his hand and led him to the edge of the platform. She handed him a long pole, to balance himself with, Baldwin thought grimly. He heard the crowd cheering. He heard their clapping in unison. They wanted a spectacle, one only a king could give them.

Baldwin was never one to show off, but he couldn’t let his subjects down, he could hardly get down himself. Baldwin clenched his teeth and bore a grimace behind his bronze face. Maybe he could do this. The clapping intensified, the screaming audience was on its feet, Baldwin was on the rope.

He couldn’t feel his body. It seemed to have blended into the air around him as he shuffled forward on the taught rope beneath the balls of his feet. Was he flying? Was he dead, being led to Heaven by the angel that gripped his ethereal wrist?

Then, wood. He was across he rope, and he hadn’t even noticed. The angel, really the only thing she could be, given his present safety, gently pulled him down into a bow for the thundering audience. Even the ringleader was shouting and cheering, unable to form a melodramatic comment on the young king’s bravery.

He was now descending on another ladder, and the very moment his feet touched solid ground, he was swept into a hug by Sibylla, “You were amazing, Baldwin! Did you see yourself? You looked like a natural up there! You- you looked like a veritable Apollo!”

Baldwin let himself be carried away by the deafening applause before him, and by the leading hand of his gracious sister. He didn’t hear the closing words that she imparted to the audience, for he was still stunned by the rush that had him floating through the tent like a seraph, at least in his imagination.

|~*~|~*~|~*~|

By the time he and Sibylla exited the circus tent, it was evening, and fiery reds painted the Jerusalem sky. He was quickly hoisted into the sedan chair and carried off. He remembered chattering away with his sister, but could not recall the conversation.

Baldwin lay in the feathery warmth of his enormous bed. He had finally come down from the exuberant high he had been feeling, and while tired beyond belief, the slim man chuckled with content. He loved the circus.


End file.
